2016 Tour of Sarawak a lesson in disorder

Teams locked out of hotels, officials stranded in airports across Malaysia and event organisers nowhere to be seen – the inaugural Tour of Sarawak has ticked all of these boxes effortlessly while continuing to demonstrate, with astonishing capacity, how not to organise a bike race.Scheduled to begin today, the 2016 Tour of Sarawak was finally cancelled after three farcical days riddled with confusion and chaos. Cycling iQ followed the fascinating developments in Malaysia and penned a piece for CyclingTips.

Livid team managers are looking to the UCI to take action as yet another Asia Tour event in Malaysia descends into farce.

Tour of Sarawak chairman and project manager Mohd Fadzli Mat Yusof is the central figure in the ongoing drama that has been escalating since Sunday and has developed into a very public political stoush with State Government officials.

Australian Continental team St. George Merida was one of the first squads to arrive in the start city of Miri, located on the western border of Brunei on the island of Borneo, only to discover there was no greeting party, no ground transportation at the airport and no hotel bookings. Though eventually admitted into accommodation at the team hotel on Sunday evening, Brett Dutton’s team was one of several locked out of their rooms the following day when informed that payment was required.